


catra and glimmer talk for a while because they are friends

by NowhereGirl471



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power (2018)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:21:53
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,761
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27362671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NowhereGirl471/pseuds/NowhereGirl471
Summary: Catra and Glimmer have an honest conversation
Kudos: 11





	catra and glimmer talk for a while because they are friends

Catra walked in on Glimmer jumping from the top of her bed, falling, teleporting back up and falling and teleporting again.   
“Is all this because the planning for the party is going just so well?”  
Glimmer yelped when she noticed Catra, tumbled in mid air, and nearly hit the ground in her confusion. Catra jumped out to try and catch her at the last minute when she got her bearings and teleported onto her bed, accidentally taking Catra with her.  
Catra looked up at Glimmer sitting on her stomach, then scrambled to her feet, hiding her embarrassment at her sudden movement.  
“I just pacing. With a few extra steps. And the planning for the party couldn’t be going better.”  
It felt weird to Catra realizing how long she’d known this girl, longer than she thought. The way she was talking now, the way she was holding herself, it was different from when they’d first met. She looked queenly. It reminded her of the pictures she’d seen of Glimmer’s mother, Angela. Well, the murals and oil paintings and intricate mozaics. And that made Catra feel…  
She tensed up her muscles and looked to the side to see the ground, but stopped. She couldn’t get down without Glimmer’s help. And she wouldn’t anyway. She was going to stop running away so much. She would. She wouldn’t do those same things.  
But she didn’t like the pain in Glimmer’s eyes and the exhaustion in her voice, and she had to do something about it or she’d start to feel…  
“Hey, Sparkles, be honest. I’ll be honest right now if you’ll be honest too.”  
Glimmer looked at her, intrigued. “Well that would certainly be interesting. Honest about what?”  
Catra shrugged. “I don’t know. Just doing it is going to be hard enough, I’m not picking too.”  
Glimmer nodded, and then everything changed. She went from being Queen of Brightmoon to a hyperactive burst of color and energy.  
“I don’t know what I’m going to do about this party! It’s driving me crazy, and I just want to get it over with but also every second that passes it feels like I’m falling further behind, and this was supposed to be the fun part!” She had, just so many facial expressions while she was talking, way more than seemed necessary to Catra. Stop. More and more Catra was feeling like she was trapped in a room with the terrible thoughts she had about people, glaring at them and wishing she could lash out even though everyone told her that was exactly opposite of what she needed to do.  
“If it’s not fun anymore then why even do it? Let Bow through the party, or let Swiftwind plan it. You won-” Catra pulled back, clenched her jaw at the bitterness that seeped into her voice and did her best to change her expression. “You won. Enjoy it. Do what you want now.”  
Glimmer looked away, sad. “It’s not that simple. This party needs to succeed, and I’m the one who needs to make it happen and the more I plan and the closer it get’s it starts feeling so….hopeless.”  
Catra laughed. “Queen of Brightmoon and drama. You’re acting like this is a battle, Glimmer. Succeed. Just relax. We’re not at war anymore.”  
Glimmer sighed and lay back, putting her hands at her side. “Yeah, but it doesn’t seem that way sometimes.”  
Catra lay back too. It was a bit unnerving to her - everything in Glimmer’s room was so fluffy that it made her feel like she was falling for a second - but she had to admit that made it a little fun.  
“Yeah. Everything still feels like a fight to me, and it’s hard to stop seeing anyone but Adora as an enemy sometimes.” Honesty. “And even her too.” Catra’s words were flowing more easily than usually, and on some basic level she felt comfortable. Glimmer….there was something terrible between them, something Catra still feared would rear up at her any moment, but she had a feeling with the girl….like understanding. The kind of feeling she had with Adora and with….Hordak. It wasn’t the same thing as being close, and certainly not with Hordak, but it did make quiet moments easier for Catra.   
She grabbed the girl’s hand. Glimmer was shocked, but apparently it was a pleasant surprised. That’s right bitch, I can be casually affectionate now. Something in Glimmer seemed to ease, and Catra felt a small, precious rush of elation; she’d just made someone feel better. And scared. Glimmer very clearly felt a bit of unease with Catra’s claws wrapped around her hand, and Catra couldn’t help it but that made her feel good too. Old habit, probably a bad one. Her claws had always been an easy way to create distance or feel in control; everyone but Adora was at least a little bit scared of them. Well, her and Scorpia. And Entrapta. I can’t believe I let them go.  
“Winning the war was what you wanted, wasn’t it?”  
Glimmer laughed, her eyes twitching. “Well of course! I wanted to, stop the horde, save the world. We all did.”  
“If that’s what you’d all wanted it wouldn’t have taken She-Ra - and you - to unite the princesses. They wanted to rule their kingdoms in peace, to live their lives. Did you ever dream about what your kingdom would be like once you’d done the actual saving?”  
Glimmer’s eyes widened, and she gripped Catra’s hand, which was annoying because Catra had to readjust her claws to keep from scratching her.  
“I - no, I never did. It was always just, be strong, stop the Horde, and you know, have fun. I mean, that’s what I was supposed to do. That’s how I could help my mo-”  
There it was. Catra didn’t do anything, didn’t move. She knew on some level her attitude was bad but she didn’t care. She’d done what she’d done, now was the time to lie back and see what happened to her.  
But Glimmer just kept talking.  
“I mean, my mom, she was wonderful and all but...she was always stressed out from all the war and impending doom and my dead dad who’s alive now and that’s great - it took a toll on her. A big one. And I loved her and I’d do anything to have her back but there were times - before I met Adora and she started having a bit more hope - that weight that she carried affected things between her and me, a bit. And as soon as I could notice that she was hurting, I wanted to cheer her up. And I was you know, Glimmer, with the pink hair and the sparkles powered by magic and everything, cheering up adults was really easy for me. And I kept trying and as the years dragged on it worked less and less each time, and I started to realize the only way I could really make her stop hurting, for good, was to crush the Horde. And then we started fighting together because I was forcing my way into the conflict and we would get so angry at each other but I was doing it so that she could finally be - “ Glimmer choked up, and was sobbing. Catra felt like curling up and hiding away forever somewhere but knew how she felt wasn’t important at the moment, and so she squeezed the girl’s hand.  
“I never got to see the way she’d smile when she knew it was all over. I never got to show what I’d done for her - I never got to prove - she never got to -” and then it was just tears, with a few syllables between but no recognizable words except “gone”.  
Catra didn’t move. She didn’t do anything except try to make her own tears quiet. This grief wasn’t hers. It felt disgusting for her to act like this after what she did, but she’d feel even worse if she had felt nothing at all.  
After a while Glimmer let out a deep breath. “I feel better. Nothing is better, but….thanks, Catra.”  
Catra tensed up. She could feel her careful neutrality slipping away. She had no right to be here, no right to hold her hand or hear those words -  
“Ow!” Catra had slipped up, and let her claws slice into Glimmer’s hand just a bit, just enough to draw blood. Glimmer moved to pull her hand away but Catra grabbed her arm with her other hand and with the first hand held on tight.  
“You might have gotten cut up more if you just pull away from my claws like that. Let me disengage, and then we can see about getting you medical attention.”  
Catra uncurled her hands until her palms were flat and Glimmer pulled away, examining the blood droplets with pinpoint eyes.  
“Medical attention? Who’s the drama queen now? It’s a tiny little scratch.”  
Catra opened her mouth to say something, then didn’t. Didn’t say or do anything.  
Glimmer rolled her eyes. “Catra, why did you freak out like that? We had just started to….get somewhere. I was starting to feel like we were….you know.”  
“Well maybe you shouldn’t feel that way!” Catra breathed in sharply, tried to will her heart to beat slower, kept an even voice. “Don’t listen to that. It doesn’t mean anything. It doesn’t matter. Don’t worry about it.”  
Glimmer put her hand on Catra’s shoulder. It was the hand with the blood on it, and the blood got onto Catra’s fur, and Glimmer did realize that was a bit of a mistake but things were to intense to stop and notice that. “Catra, honestly. I was just really, really honest, you owe me now.”  
Catra didn’t say anything.  
Then she realized, in a bolt of terror, that nothing was stopping her anymore.  
“I’m the reason your mom’s not here anymore.”  
Glimmer’s face hardened. Her heart seemed to skip a beat. Catra felt like she did back when she’d set off the portal. She’d thrown herself into something terrible and she was going to continue full force no matter what happened.  
“So?”  
Catra bolted to a standing position. “What do you mean ‘so’! I took her away from you, I -” Catra stopped, took a shaky breath. She could not make this all about her. “I don’t want to get angry with you Glimmer. What you feel matters. And you have to feel something. And it’s agony waiting to find out what it is.”  
“What do you want me to say? That I’m angry? That I’m sad? That sometimes I look at you with - revulsion - disgust - hatred?”  
“YES!”  
“Why should I have to go through it again just so that you feel less guilty!”  
Catra looked away, and thought seriously. “I need to know where I stand with you. I can’t take not knowing.”  
Glimmer stared her down, shaking with growing, full blown rage, then screamed, smothering the sound with one of her many pillows to keep from drawing any attention.  
“You killed my mom Catra. You were selfish and stupid and a part of my life was destroyed because of it. What can I say about that. Nothing could ever be enough. I still miss her and I live with that pain every day.”  
Catra spoke softly, nearly in a whisper. “I want to give you a chance to get rid of some of that pain.”  
Glimmer narrowed her eyes and started slowly stepping towards Catra. “What, do you want me to hate you? To convince myself that you’re the one to blame, you’re the one who took my life away from me, that everything would just be okay if it weren’t for you. Do you want me to hurt you? To try and destroy your life in return, defeat you?   
Would that take the pain away?”  
She leaned close and whispered in Catra’s ear.  
“Did it work for you.”  
Catra couldn’t stop herself from crying now. Glimmer stepped back, her face a cold, monarchal mask, and then her expression melted, and she groaned, and her voice jumped up about an octave.  
“And in saying that I really did do something to hurt you, didn’t I. And it felt good! That totally undermines my whole point.”  
She looked at Catra expectantly, hoping for a laugh, then leaned back when Catra kept crying. “I could hate you, Catra. But I don’t want to. For one thing, it would be super inconvenient since you’re practically glued to my best friend and the most indispensable asset for protecting my kingdom. And I really, really did learn a lot from you on the pitfalls of revenge and the obsessive spiral of hate and self destruction. Especially the terrible terrible consequences that it could have!”  
Catra kept looking for things to say but couldn’t find anything but the obvious. “Yeah, all that was pretty bad.”  
Glimmer laughed, still trying to force some levity between them. Then sighed, and stopped trying to maneuver around her feelings.  
She took Catra’s hands, incredibly slowly, just really nervous about her claws now, and breathed in.  
“Catra, I forgive you for what you did.”  
Catra’s eyes welled up again, and Glimmer felt exasperated but she knew how it would go. Then Catra hugged her, and that was certainly not expected.  
“Thank you.” She pulled back and took Glimmer’s cheeks in her hands. “That means so much to me.”  
Glimmer finally smiled without any exertion behind the action, just because she wanted to. “As much as I hated….this, I feel better too. I didn’t want things to be complicated but - we had to talk about this, didn’t we? It was inevitable. How could we be friends and keep this huge unsaid thing between us?”  
Catra looked at her, confused. Just confused.  
“After everything, why do you want to be friends with me?”  
Glimmer was confused now too. “I mean, that’s not what it’s about Catra. You became my friend long before I ever wanted it that way. It just happened. Because I like you.”  
Catra laughed. “I guess that makes as much sense as anything. But you know I still don’t believe anyone but Adora.”  
“Yeah.”  
Again Catra laughed. Nervous laughter. A lot was being released. “I mean, I guess we’re done, right? I’m sorry, you forgive me, that’s how it works. I get that that’s what just happened. But I just don’t understand how you could forgive me for that.”  
Glimmer dangled her legs off the end of her bed, and her eyes looked extra sparkly.  
“I spent just a few months with Shadoweaver and without mom and it tore me apart from my two only friends and I made a mistake that nearly destroyed the world.”  
“...so that’s why you forgive me.”  
Glimmer laughed. It seemed strange that she could while looking so sad. “No Catra. I forgave you because you’re you. Because you helped us save the world and, and because you made me feel like a little bit of my home was left when I thought I’d lost everything on Horde Prime’s ship and because you make Adora happy and….and me too.  
It’s just that when I think about Shadoweaver and I think about my mom….I don’t think I’d be able to forgive you if she hadn’t raised me. So I kind of have to! If I don’t, then I’m throwing away what she did for me.”  
Catra was crying but she smiled. “She made you nice.”  
“She….made it easy to be nice. She made it easy to forgive and to apologize and just….to be happy. I think she’d want me to forgive you, and so if I can do that….I can keep her with me more.”  
Catra looked for something to say, was at a loss. Knew she had to get more words out of the way.  
“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry.”  
Glimmer looked away, seeing something that was only for her. “I am too. I love her, so much. And I miss her. But here, now, there are people I love who I want to live my life with. And now you’re one of them.”  
They looked at each other, and things were good.  
Then they heard a knock at the door and Bow’s face poked through. He looked confused, but then his face got that fluttery expression of joy and wonder he did.  
“What?” Catra shouted down at him, Glimmer fondly smiling at her reaction.  
“It’s just so cute to see the two of you getting along.”


End file.
